Girl in Florence

A Tuscan Texan immersed in Florentine life

A Great recipe to make a fabulous Carrot Cake

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I have been craving a moist ( I hate saying that word ) carrot cake for some time but I always seem to either burn anything I put in the oven or overdo some ingredient ( like baking soda ) to make it completely disgusting. Recently for the girls get together I ended up bringing this while also saving some for t-mans parents and everyone loved it! It can be difficult finding all of the ingredients you need when you look up recipes in English, so I tweaked a bit from a few different ones. My base recipe comes from Canadian Living and it’s actually a pumpkin carrot cake but I didn’t add the puree to mine…Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup (175 mL) sugar
  • 3/4 cup (175 mL) packed brown sugar (zucchero di canna in Italy, I actually can find the more packed kind at the Coop or Esselunga supermarkets
  • eggs
  • 1/2 cup (125 mL) vegetable oil
  • 1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla (essenza di vaniglia , look in the baking aisle you’ll see it in little vials and green packaging )
  • 2 cups (500 mL) all-purpose flour
  • 2 tsp (10 mL) baking powder ( lievito )
  • 2 tsp (10 mL) cinnamon (cannella)
  • 1 tsp (5 mL) baking soda ( bicarbonato di sodio )
  • 3/4 tsp (4 mL) salt
  • 1/2 tsp (2 mL) nutmeg ( noce moscata )
  • 2 cups (500 mL) grated carrots
  • not just for bambini ; )

     

    1 baggie of pureed carrot and pumpkin ( pictured on the left, you can find this in the store where baby food is sold, seriously it makes the cake moist! ) its called Vellutata Carote e Zucca

  • 1 small bag of chopped walnuts ( I used one of the snack bags with chopped walnuts and cherries..it worked and was cheaper )
  • 1 Orange for zest
  • ICING, 2 packages of Light cream cheese, 3/4 cup (175 mL) butter, softened, 3-3/4 cups (925 mL) icing sugar (Zucchero a velo ), 1/2 cup (125 mL) whipping cream ( Panna da Montare )

Preparation

In a large bowl, beat together sugar, brown sugar, eggs, oil, and vanilla until smooth. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg; pour over the egg mixture and stir just until moistened. Stir in carrots, zest, pumpkin & carrot mixture, and nuts. Spread in greased 13- x 9-inch (3.5 L) metal cake pan.

Bake in centre of ( 180°C) oven for about 30 minutes ( the official recipe said 40 minutes but my oven heats up really quick due to it being about 1000 years old and grumpy). Let it cool for a while before applying the icing.

Icing: In a bowl, beat butter until light and fluffy; beat in your powdered sugar alternately with cream, making 3 additions of sugar and 2 of cream. Cool the icing in the fridge for a few hours before putting on your cake.

I am pretty sure if you are related to Betty Crocker or at the very least, not me, your cake should look like this…

A Delicious carrot cake for dessert
never going to look like this ( my desserts )

My best effort looked like this :

Carrot Cake muffins made at home..
funny hedgehog and my carrot cake muffins

They were awesome though… and I loved the icing. It was a little runny but hey I did make it myself.. We “attempted” to decorate the muffins by cutting thin strips of carrot to make wheels and put some sliced pineapple on top.. ENJOY!

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3 Responses

  1. Ahahaha, I hate the word ‘moist’ too. Unfortunately it’s so damn useful when it comes to blathering about food.

    Also, is funny hedgehog a hand puppet? If so, I used to be the proud owner of my own funny hedgehog

    1. haha I feel the same way about the words “honeysuckle”, “subpoena” and “wetnap” ..as for the funny hedgehog comment, I seem to love the little guys to the extent that whenever I see a cute figurine in a store, I’ll buy it. Hence the one sitting on my table when I snapped the muffin pic. I am very intrigued to see this hedgehog hand puppet though.. 😉

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Georgette Jupe

Welcome to my personal blog by a curious American girl living and working between Zug, Switzerland and Florence, Italy with my husband Nico, our newborn Annabelle and Ginger the beagle. This space is primarily to share about my love for Italy (currently on a 13 year romance) with a fair amount of real talk, practical advice, travel suggestions and adjusting to a new culture (Switzerland). Find me on IG @girlinflorence @girlinzug

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